Blog | Gigantic

To celebrate our new show about the lives of The Young and Hollywoodian -- Gigantic premieres Friday October 8 right after Degrassi! -- we present to you: a weekly roundup of news about the Young and Hollywoodian.

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There's supposedly a Shia LaBeoufinterview in The Sun -- which, let's remember, is the British tabloid notorious for just making stuff up sometimes -- where he talks about how his career basically gave him back his father. He says that when he was a kid working on set, he needed a parent with him. And since his dad was unemployed and fresh out of rehab, he was available to be the on-set parent (while Shia's mom worked). "If I had no money and no way to supplement my father's income so he could survive, I would have no father," Shia (again, supposedly) said. I can't decide if this is a really sad story or a happy one... probably, like most of life, it's both.

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Welp, Lindsay's back in rehab (after getting out, then relapsing, then going back to jail, then being released to re-enter rehab). It's really interesting how she's been handling this most recent relapse. First, she got "in front of the story" as they say, by tweeting that she had relapsed and intended to face the consequences, basically as soon as she failed her drug test. So the tabloids couldn't be like "OMG we found out Lindsay relapsed!" -- she controlled the story herself. And now, sources are saying she plans to "step up her treatment and do more than what she was previously ordered to do." So, those speaking for Lindsay seem to be saying that she's taking her recovery seriously and had a big setback. Here's hoping that's true -- we wish her the best.

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And the paparazzi have officially scared Kelly Osbourne out of her own house. (Here's the story. )They were trying to take pics of her through her windows and broke her gate (I'm guessing she's back on the pap's Hot List after the big break-up with Luke Worrall and the fact that she lost weight). So, she doesn't feel safe there anymore and is looking for "a place in a secure building." So messed. Poor Kelly. Or... do you not feel sorry for her 'cause that's what you get for being famous? Drop your opinion in the comments...

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Time to meet another Gigantic cast member! This time: Gia Mantegna, who plays Vanessa. Vanessa is the girl who grew up as a child actress in a messed up family -- she's now an emancipated minor. So, she has deep-seated envy for Anna's family's closeness and supportiveness. Sometimes that envy makes her act like a little lost puppy looking for a home, and sometimes the envy makes her act like a back-stabbing b-word. You know, depends on the day.

Gia, in real life, is not so tortured -- though she, like her Gigantic co-star Grace, did grow up in the shadow of Hollywood. Her dad is Joe Mantegna (he's probably most known for being Joey Zasa in The Godfather: Part III and doing Fat Tony's voice on The Simpsons... and he also has an IMDB entry that's about a mile long). She was actually born while he was busy shooting Godfather III.

You might have seen Gia around before; she was in Unaccompanied Minors, 13 Going on 30, and Secret Life of the American Teenager.

And in ten days, you'll see her on Gigantic, when it premieres right after Degrassi. STOKED!

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Less than two weeks 'til our brand new original series, Gigantic premieres!

Therefore, let's play "Get to know the Gigantic Cast."

First up, Grace Gummer, who plays Anna.

Here are some things that you might like to know about the girl who's face you're about to see all up on your TV screen every Friday after Degrassi.

GET TO KNOW GRACE GUMMER!

1) Gigantic, you may have heard, is all about the (fictional) teen sons and daughters of (fictional) A-list celebrities -- gigantor movie star types. As it happens, Grace knows intimately well what it's like to grow up with a gigantor movie star mom, because her mom is Meryl Streep (that's Meryl, on the right). Perhaps you know her as Julia Child, or the devil from The Devil Wears Prada, or from seeing her at the Oscars every year because seriously, she gets nominated basically EVERY YEAR. What I'm saying is, she's kind of a big deal.

2) Her dad is a sculptor, which might have something to do with the fact that she studied Art History at Vassar.

3) She did theatre in college, and then did some costume design work in Rome after graduation. I bet that must have sucked, living in Italy.

4) Then she interned for Zac Posen in New York. Which must have also sucked.

5) Grace is actually not the only star of Gigantic with personal knowledge of the life of a Hollywood family, either. More on that in future blogs!

OK so, Anna and Walt Moore came back to Los Angeles after spending two years in Australia where their parents were filming some sort of gigantor big famous movie, because their parents are gigantor big famous people. Their friends Piper and Finn, also the children of different gigantor big famous person, were eager for their return. And Vanessa, their kind-of-sort-of-friend who no one really trusts because she's kind of a bitch also greeted them on arrival, stiffly, with fakey fake air kisses.

Also eager for their return was Joey, the extremely attractive boy who has absolutely no famous parents and with whom Anna made out with RIGHT before she left for Australia for two years, and also with whom she exchanged actual letters on actual paper while she was away. So sweet.

And now, Anna and Joey In a Nutshell: Right when the Moores got back to town, Joey found out that this girl he slept with while she was gone (Lulu Khandan, who is the daughter of a very powerful Hollywood agent) kind of sort of had his baby. Her family is pretending they adopted the baby, but Joey wants to be in his son's life and he's fighting for that right -- but he hasn't spilled the beans to Anna. So, the secretness of it all is making him act weird, which constantly causes Anna to think she's insane and that he doesn't actually like her, which... he totally likes her. Actually he loves her. And Anna totally loves him back, and they said it to each other, and whenever he's assured her that everything's cool and his weirdness has nothing to do with her, she's believed him.

L-R that's Finn, Anna, Vanessa, and Lulu from Gigantic

Jo-Anna have been pretty solid in general; even when Anna's Australian boy toy Russell showed up in Los Angeles (Hiiii Russell) and seemed pretty bent on getting Anna back, Anna and Joey survived it. So things were looking awesome and Anna was in love and she was thinking OK, maybe I'm ready to cash in my v-card with this guy, and she had the perfect romantic night planned for them... but Joey and his conscience couldn't let it happen without explaining the whole "o hai also I technically have a baby" situation to her, which she basically freaked out about because, why had he hidden it from her for SO long? Who keeps a secret like that from someone he loves, you know?

So last we saw them, Anna was pretty pissed at Joey and Joey was getting mad hit on by Lulu who dropped an L-word on him and Lord knows where that's gonna go.

L-R that's Russell, Anna, Piper, and Lulu from Gigantic

OK then there's Walt and Maggie: Walt met Maggie, an adorable cater waitress at a movie premiere after-party, and he tried to hide the fact that he's Hollywood Royalty from her because he hates that whole game and "it gets weird"... but she already knew, because duh. So once that was all out in the open everything was fine until Maggie came clean that she's "kind of studying to be an actress," which freaked Walt out because in general, aspiring actresses probably want something from majorly-connected super-famous families. But, he got over it, and they're going strong. He even called in a favor to help out her career when he thought he might lose her to the deadline her dad had set (you have x months to make it in Hollywood or we go home, kiddo' type thing) . But now that she's getting a taste of the possibility of making it, she seems to be turning into the girl he was afraid she might be -- for one thing, she seemed to enjoy being on a red carpet maybe a little too much. (To Walt, the whole red carpet experience is fake and Hollyweird; to Maggie, it's a fabulous moment to savor because she's been dreaming of it basically her whole entire life.) In the last episode we saw, she seems to have taken a page out of Vanessa's rule book and set about to majorly blackmailing Mr. Khandan because she found out about the whole Lulu baby situation.

Vanessa , by the way, was a famous child actress who never learned proper social skills or, say, how to love, and became an emancipated minor. She looks up to Anna's mom a lot, but also kind of wants to compete with her; it's weird. Vanessa is weird. She can't help it. So far we've seen her: blatantly steal a project from Anna's mom and lie about it and then borrow a gown from her; conspire to stir up as much of the Anna/Joey/Lulu/Baby drama as suits her needs at any given time; get really harsh with Maggie when she sensed a career threat; invite the paps to what was supposed to be a small, private party; and throw out a ton of great bitchy lines. There's just something about Vanessa; she's fun as hell to watch.

L-R that's Piper and Finn's stepmother, the back of Piper's head, and Maggie from Gigantic

Piper... let's see. She flashed her boobs to the paparazzi; basically stalked a snarky internet commenter; held a sign up for the paps that told them to kiss her big beautiful fat ass; fell in love with her family's live-in therapist; kissed her family's live-in therapist; made a faux suicide threat to get her family's live-in therapist to come "save" her after he quit. When last we saw her, she met a really nice guy named Peter (who btw was played by the guy who played Fat Neal on the Dungeons and Dragons episode of Community, but I digress.)

Finn, meanwhile, has no luck with the ladies. He tries, and he fails. He's just not as effortlessly cool as Walt, though he does have one hell of a wardrobe and he's great with a camera. And he also has a huge crush on his stratospherically Hollywoodian step-monster, the "No more white food" lady. Unfortunately, on the last episode we saw, he also caught her cheating on his dad, sigh.

L-R that's Joey and Anna making out, Walt and Anna's parents, and Walt himself from Gigantic

Meanwhile, all the celebuspawns have also had to deal with the various headaches of being the children of obscenely rich celebrities such as: getting reamed out by your parents for writing an article about them for Teen Vogue even though you were really excited to get your first byline, because your parents HATE press (Anna); getting discouraging tough love from your dad about your music career because your dad wants you to come by success honestly instead of by your last name (Walt); getting shot down by your dream high school for being "a distraction" even though it's not like you ASKED to be born to famous parents and anyway, you're actually really proud of your parents so screw you stupid school (Anna); having anonymous Internet commenters pick apart your physical appearance, which always hurts no matter how famous you are (Piper); and ending up in the tabloids for punching the dude who broke your sister's heart (Walt).

OK! Now you're all caught up and ready to watch a full hour of new Gigantic Friday at 9:30p et, right after Degrassi!